Foreword: Because I’ve sort of fallen behind on this blog a few times, this week is a special event: TRIPLE TREMENDOUS TRANSCONTINENTAL TRAVESTY WEEK. This week there will be three updates to make up for my slacking off. I hope you’re as excited as I wish I was.
So a few months ago I came across something that shocked me. That something was this:
“That’s Harry Potter,” you may say. “But something is wrong. That doesn’t look like the Harry Potter cover I know and love. Maybe it’s just a foreign cover. It’s nothing to worry about.”
You’d be half right. It is foreign, but it’s also something to worry about. You see, in the United Kingdom, there are two editions of each Harry Potter book: the children’s edition and the adult edition. What’s the difference? The cover. That’s all. Adults in the UK buy these editions of the books because they’re afraid to be seen in public reading a book with colorful (interesting) artwork directed at children on its cover.
This is because adults must be serious, sophisticated, and sexy. They must be bland and boring and monotonous and they must conform. They cannot have unique interests, such as children’s literature, lest they seem outlandish. So they must rebrand their interests, disguise them so that they seem like more of the same, nothing unique here! They must do this so they remain in their position as respectable, perfectly normal adults.
The ironic thing about all of this is that it’s the very same logic used by Harry’s hated aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, whose main goal in life is to be a perfectly normal, semi-wealthy, bland, boring, suburban family. This goal is the root of their hatred for Harry.
While buying the adult edition of Harry Potter may be an attempt to enjoy the series while maintaining the respect of their peers, some people (such as myself) might actually lose a tremendous amount of respect for anyone they saw trying to conceal their inner child in this way.
Hiding your true self from the world reveals a weakness to the pressures of your peers to be just like them, which is ultimately giving into the idea that they are better than you and that you must improve yourself by becoming like them. It reveals low self esteem, a lot of insecurity, and a fear of yourself that will cause you to lose much more respect than you will ever gain.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Be comfortable with who you are.
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ReplyDeleteI think the separate book cover is actually even less mature than the original. Children always do things to seem grown-up, and you can't actually be grown up until you don't care about that anymore. A mature person can feel totally comfortable enjoying children's books and gummi worms and playing outside and staring mindlessly at the TV with Blue's Clues on!
ReplyDelete(Thanks, blogspot, for reminding me I messed up and keeping a ghost of my other comment.)
There's actually a C.S. Lewis quote I like that pertains to this. You might like it too.
ReplyDelete"Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis